What A Teacher Wants

 THE LATEST TEACHER APPROVED TECHNOLOGY: CLASS CONNECT

By Jennie Dougherty | English Teacher | edUpgrade’s Director of Teacher Innovation

Exhausted by the task of scanning and tagging thousands of pages of curriculum, I was overwhelmed and vulnerable to the kind of pictures Evernote was posting online.

With a super cute pic like this, why would I have any reason to doubt that Evernote could meet my needs. The artists and marketers who drew this knew what a teacher wanted. But it wasn’t just about looks, we also had a lot in common. Here I was trying to get rid of my binder system and there it was offering me digital notebooks for all my content.

I used the Evernote clipper tool to grab websites and add them to my digital notebooks, which helped me overcome the disappointment I felt when I realized the actual program was less attractive than I’d anticipated.

Things began to fall apart the second I got seriously involved. Uploads took too long and there wasn’t enough storage capacity, so I had to wait an entire month to get more space before I could continue transferring my curriculum from paper to PDFs. It was making me doubt my decision to leave my old binder system.

It wasn’t like Evernote was the only curriculum management system I’ve been using since school began. I’ve tried Learn Boost, Better Lesson and InstaGrok. Heck I even gave Pinterest a shot! I will be the first to admit that unlike the first three champion programs listed, Pinterest was completely void of substantive features. So why was it that I wished the other programs were more like it? I found my answer in in last week’s New York Time’s Magazine cover story written by Charles Duhigg. And no, its not because I’m pregnant.

While this article was primarily focused on how corporations use shoppers’ data to target consumers, it contained a paragraph that made me realize what it was that I was looking for in a curriculum management program and why it mattered so much.

Duhigg’s description of habits made me confident knowing I wasn’t destined to drive around a trunk full of binders for the rest of my life. According to Duhigg, “[h]abits aren’t destiny — they can be ignored, changed or replaced.” A teacher can escape the fate of driving around with a trunk full of binders for the rest of my life.  Eager educators should be cautioned that the author also acknowledges the difficulty of resisting old habits. “Unless you deliberately fight a habit — unless you find new cues and rewards — the old pattern will unfold automatically.” So, unless we find the new experience of lesson planning more rewarding than the old one, we may want to start thinking about investing in a trailer hitch.

Further explanation of my struggle to transfer my curriculum creation and organization to a digital medium was found in Duhigg’s concise explanation of habit formation. “The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use.” For me, this is every Sunday night, when my anxiety level peaks and prevents me from avoiding the reality that the coming week’s lesson plans are due in less than 12 hours. “Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional.” Lesson planning is obviously a mental routine, and anyone who read the sentence about my anxiety can figure its probably an emotional one as well, but for those who are not educators let me tell you that pulling all-nighters once a week 36 weeks a year-as I did my first year teaching-is excruciatingly physical.

“Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” Putting the all nighters, overwhelming anxiety, and mental strain aside, what I remember most about lesson planning is that clean white binder in which each item is carefully selected, organized, articulated, in a standards based, objective driven lesson plan-complete with daily agendas, objectives and assessments. For those who read last Sunday’s article, flipping through the pages of that binder, and placing it neatly in my LLBean tote is my “Febreze moment”. It is the reward I enjoy at the end of an established lesson planning routine. “Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges.” So its not that I crave the binders. Nor is it that the programs that I used were unable to fulfill the needs of my established lesson planning routine. The problem lay in the fact that creating curriculum online was not providing a reward equal to that I experienced when I used Pinterest or my old binder system.

So what was it that I was looking for in these programs? It wasn’t a specific feature, it was a feeling of reward. The reason I liked Pinterest more than those other programs is that it gave me a huge reward for gathering the materials I would use in my lesson. I was able to instantly see when others repined my  resources and what they grouped them with. Not only that, having all of my materials gathered in one place gave me a calming perspective and let me to recognize and admire the work I had accomplished as I began organizing each of the materials that I had gathered. Unfortunately Pinterest is all looks, and does not, I repeat DOES NOT, provide a platform suitable for anything more than the most superficial lesson planning. So what was a teacher to do? Where would I find a program that would support a digitally enhanced curriculum and provide the reward I was seeking? Turns out, I’d already found the alpha I was looking for all along.

When I first alpha/beta tested this program back in July I could see its potential, as well as the fact that it was having an identity crisis, and didn’t really know what it wanted to be. Suffice it is to say, I was thrilled to continue collaborating with the genius mind behind this program, Eric Simons a member of ImagineK12s first cohort and a recent high school graduate who lives in Silicon Valley building insanely awesome edtech apps! This is always a point I like to bring up with any of my Juniors who doubt their potential. Since releasing the alpha version of Class Connect, Eric has made strategic pivots and redesigned every last line of code to meet the needs of the educators who tested class connect’s earliest iteration. I have never witnessed a more thoroughly responsive developer/entrepreneur. Today, it is my pleasure to honor his program Class Connect with the distinction of being a Teacher Approved Technology.

Class Connect is a web based application, which means that you can use it from anything that can access the internet-no downloading or installation required (score!). This application allows educators to gather, organize, and share their entire curriculum-from the documents, to the documentaries to the awesome digital resources our students deserve. Here’s a quick overview of the reasons Class Connect earns the distinction of being Teacher Approved:

• Recognizes that a lesson is more than a plan
• Gives me a place where we can save and organize all of the content required for the 21st century curriculum.
• Makes Curriculum Design a Rewarding Experience
• Saves time! gives you back the time you would have spent emailing lesson plans to admin., copying documents from lesson for students who were absent, and scheduled for working collaboratively with colleagues.
• Students and Teachers can be better protected from the content that lurks around the edges of the valuable digital resources we want our students to access, analyze and ultimately create.
• Save money would have spent on binders and paper…for more specific details see previous post
• Provides a catalyst for making every classroom a blended learning environment.
• Makes it easier for every teacher, and thereby every student, to use digital technology and digital materials. – It will help us defy the dismal stats. from 2000 that you can check out below
• Its free! Yay!
• Promotes collaboration! ***More to come in a follow up interview with Eric!
• Its not going to automatically share your work with the world! I can share my entire unit (digital items and all)

Clip Art Illustrations of Teacher, Binder, Computer and Stacks of Books are from Discovery Education’s Clip Art Gallery created by Mark A. Hicks, illustrator.

Teacher on a Mission

My name is Jennie Dougherty. I am a teacher at one of the largest urban high schools East of the Mississippi. Everyday I work within the inequitable opportunities given to students from districts with limited resources. Last summer I went on a mission to give my students access to awesome technology. I created partnerships between my classroom and ed. tech. entrepreneurs who were looking for opportunities to test their designs and programs. Our collaboration gave my students access to technology with the potential to empower their education and future. After talking with other teachers, I realized I would be selfish to keep this opportunity for myself and my students.

What began as a single teacher and a beta classroom blog, grew into a network of 150+ innovative educators from around the United States. While we are from all over the K -12 spectrum, we are united in our joy of beta testing ed. tech. and giving our students the opportunity to be the first to try out and use new programs.

On Feb. 15th, Beta Classroom will relaunch as the incorporated nonprofit edUpgrade. While the name is changing, the mission stays the same.  The edUpgrade co-founders are dedicated to supporting the work of rock star teachers and the punk ed. tech. entrepreneurs we work with. On the 15th, we will be presenting the national network of innovative educators with a portfolio of betas that have the potential to optimize our practice and our students outcomes. In exchange for free access to beta innovations, these classroom rock stars will be providing the highest quality feedback-telling what we love; what we dream it could be.

We ask each beta to be in our portfolio because we think it is awesome and has the potential to positively transform our classrooms. As such, these betas have the greatest potential to benefit from the powerful feedback that comes from classroom facing teachers who are hungry for the chance to shape the technology of tomorrow.

We are looking for classroom agents of change, tech. visionary, or friend of this revolution to support our mission.

Earlier this summer, I worked with 3 extraordinary entrepreneurs to collaboratively co-author a response to Edsurge’s beta bill of rights. What we came up with was a best practices for educator and entrepreneur collaboration. With these principals in mind I continued my mission this fall and quickly learned several important lessons.

LESSON 1: “Ms. D., B.Y.O.D.?! DO YOU WANT ME TO GET JUMPED?”
It would have to reward teachers with the opportunity to earn devices that are inequitably distributed among this nation’s classrooms. This lesson came from one of my students and is therefore the most important of all. I went into this academic year psyched to get the B.Y.O.D. message to my students. 20 minutes into my first day of class, a student raised her hand and asked, “Ms. taking out your smart phone can get you jumped. I don’t care if other students see me take out my smart phone, but I know some of my friends would be worried that taking out their phone would make them a target.” Time stops and I feel my face flush with shame at not being able to predict the infinite ways that inequality saturates every pore of my classroom. As a teacher, my first priority is to keep my students safe. 20 minutes into the school year and I had received my first major set back. I tell my students that resiliency is a 21st century skill, and feel my determination calcify as I inform them that I refuse to deprive them of the opportunity to have their education positively transformed by 21st century technology. After a momentary pause, I explain that I will be bringing enough devices for the class to work in small groups and experience the awesome betas I had the privilege of testing over the summer. The next day, and every day since then, I have brought a laptop computer, two ipod touch devices, a smart phone and an ipad with me to school each day. Moreover, I’ve become resolute in my commitment to creating an opportunity for teachers to be classroom agents of change and obtain the devices that they and their students need.

LESSON 2: I CAN AFFORD 2 IPADS
I am not satisfied with solving the problem for just my classroom. The fact is that I promised the lead teachers of the network that I would find a way to get them the devices they deserve. These educators are leaders because they have used technology to innovate the classroom and powerfully optimize the education of their students. So I took it upon myself to get the devices, and as a full time public school teacher, living at home, and paying off student loan debt, I learned another important lesson: I can afford 2 ipads. As a full time public school teacher, living at home, and paying off student loan debt, I can afford 2 ipads.

LESSON 3: A LETTER TO THE BIG DOGS
How could I get them the devices? The network of educators testing out these betas realized how profound an impact they could have on the classroom. Yet, many of our students did not have the devices to access these programs and no teacher would ever put a student’s well being as risk no matter what the benefit. So what to do? The network was created to give teachers a voice in shaping the technology of tomorrow as well as providing fledgling entrepreneurs and visionary technologists with the opportunity to get feedback necessary to develop extraordinary programs. I can’t ask these entrepreneurs to buy ipads for classrooms; they don’t have the funding and it would create a conflict of interest and undermine the integrity of our feedback and thereby the strength of teacher’s voices. Last summer, I wrote a letter and even shared it with my students as an example. I titled it “Letter to the Big Dogs”, and sent it to the heads of Gazelle with the hopes of getting one set of devices. While that failed I wasn’t deterred and went through with setting up a page where the money earned from old devices could be donated. This idea has not had the success I hoped it would. Another option that became very clear was to sell reports of these betas to investors. I may be a teacher and without an MBA but I know what evil smells like, and that kind of thing reeks of wrongness. It would be like publishing a wedding announcement with a photo of you from middle school…you know the one before you got your braces taken off, when you thought that nothing was cooler than a baby-t and overalls. While the last of these assumptions was in fact correct, not every decision we make as tweens was equally wise. While this period of growth is a necessary part of self-discovery, a summary of that mistake filled journey does not capture the magnificent person you are and the bright future ahead of you. While I am sure there are hipsters with save the date announcements featuring snapshots from their respective tween years, the other 99% of us get why its not okay to sell information about the highs and lows of a beta’s early development.

LESSON 4: I CAN’T DO THIS ALONE
I couldn’t not do this alone. Even with the League of Friends supporting me as mentors and guardian angels, the mission deserves more than I alone could give. Thankfully I met the individuals with the audacity, energy, and rock star status to join me. Together Beth Rabbitt, a doctoral fellow at Harvard innovation lab, Ben Berte, a co-founder of Socrative, and myself co-founded edUpgrade. During this founding period we addressed each of the lessons learned and sketched a plan of action to ensure the ideas and voices of betas and educators have the chance to work in symbiotic collaboration and produce new and awesome technologies.

Responding to EdSurge’s Beta Bill of Rights

Dear EdSurge Community,

Earlier this summer, I told you of my mission to provide my students with access to transformative technology, and you were incredible in responding with guidance. The purpose of this email, is to offer lessons I’ve learned during my journey, and recommendations for Edsurge’s awesome beta bill of rights.

My mission began when I sent an email to technology companies as well as groups like New School Venture Fund and Startl to say: “Hey! Access to technology is inequitable, but I’m on a mission to change that! I want my students and I to have access to potentially transformative ed. tech. and will offer user insight in exchange.”

Days later, I spoke with the CEO of a very large technology company, who chuckled at the idea of a partnership between myself and technology companies. “Well it works out well for you,” he told me.  In this person’s mind, the insights of a teacher were insignificant when compared to the technology their company would allow me to review. His remarks did not deter me, because I was in talks with startups that were not only excited to partner with me but also revolutionizing technology in ways this executive could never imagine.

My mission led me to form extraordinarily successful partnerships with Daniel Yoo of Enome Inc., Brett Kopf of Remind101, and Sam Chaudhary of Class Dojo. Our relationship worked because they genuinely dedicate themselves to create technology that will help my students scale the difficult mountains we ascend each day; and because I realized the importance of helping them understand what each step feels like.

Attached to this email is the result of our collaborative effort to help Edsurge create a tool for other startups and teachers to use. We need these “rights” to establish a new relationship between teachers and technology, and hope our contribution will serve as a testament to the extraordinary potential of effective relationships between teachers and entrepreneurs.

Thank you so much for the time and energy.

Sincerely yours,

Jennie Dougherty